Poison
by NellietheMarvelous
Summary: There are things in life that you're better off leaving behind. Lisbon realizes first hand just how true that can be - certain things can be a poison. Short introspective oneshot.


**Disclaimer: Don't own it.**

**A/N: This is just a short little thing that wouldn't leave me alone until I typed it out. I don't know where it came from but I based some of it off of a drabble I wrote a while ago. That being said...I really have no idea what genre this is so I just put general. Here's some introspective Lisbon for you. At the end, you'll notice that it never actually states who 'she' is but there are references and it's definitely Lisbon.**

In the dark of early morning she lies awake in an otherwise empty bed. The sheets around her are cool and leave goosebumps rising on her skin when she rolls to her side but she doesn't even notice. She's too busy thinking of a man – one she's somehow fallen for over the course of a few weeks. It'd been a mistake to visit him in the night and leave before dawn but she'd done it and now she's paying the price.

Closing her eyes in an attempt to forget the way she lavished him with warm kisses and soft caress, she finds that her attempts are futile. It's forever ingrained in her brain and not even her activities of the night before have managed to replace the continuous loop of images, feels, tastes and sounds that she keeps remembering as if it all happened seconds ago. A shiver tortures her body into shaking but it's over as soon as she pulls the blankets tighter around her bare form.

She royally screwed everything up. The thing she'd started by going to his place is over by her doing and she still hasn't told him. She knows that it's wrong to just avoid it but she can't bring herself to give him the true reason when he asks why and she knows he'll ask. He always does.

What had started as an apology had somehow grown into something it shouldn't have. A trip to a friends to say sorry for missing out on dinner had quickly become shedding clothes to the sounds of Beethoven in the background. If she'd just gone to the dinner in the first place none of this would have happened. She would have sat with her team in Jane's new apartment and ate a meal, probably helped clean up and then she would have left but no, she'd made a lame excuse so she could miss out. Her decision to say she was sorry for such a thing by showing up at his door had been a mistake. A very _very _lovely mistake.

She's the boss. She's not supposed to sleep with the consultant which is partly why she's stopped going by his place. He's never slept in her bed, never will. The sheets smell of musk and cologne but it's not his and while that strangely comforts her, it also shreds her in a way that leaves her feeling exposed and dirty – only for a brief moment and then she's remembering that she's a grown woman who isn't in a relationship with Patrick Jane. Sex with someone named Connor wasn't cheating when her 'thing' with Jane's been over in her mind for almost two weeks.

Agreeing to have dinner with Connor again isn't cheating either even though now she feels like it is. Perhaps she needs to discuss things with the blond consultant she's been avoiding. The man who left her bed just a little over an hour ago is the second part of the reason she stopped going to Jane's.

She met someone else. Things with him are easy and she never has to worry about him getting in her head. He's just a man. A good looking, single man who likes her and so far seems to accept her long hours on the job. This has been the first night she's let him in her home, in her bed and her sexual encounters with Jane have been over for a week and a half. She's known Connor for over a month though. She's been going on dates with him for just as long but she doesn't consider that cheating – perhaps she should. They weren't anything more than friends going to dinner until five days ago and technically Jane knew.

Maybe they'd both been deceiving themselves but she isn't now and she hopes that he isn't either. Any kind of relationship between them would never last so she's merely packing up her feelings now and stowing them away in a box marked 'do not open' and shoving them into the back of her mind. She has a chance at a normal relationship – something she's never actually experienced – and she wants it. She wants a romance with someone who doesn't know some of her darkest secrets. She wants Connor but she needs Jane.

She's not the type of woman to have two men at once and she doesn't intend to become one. She's simply acknowledging that while she wants to forget the fact that she's partially in love with Patrick Jane, she can't even though she's moving into a relationship with another man.

Her thoughts are sincerely unforgiving but she deserves it. After all, she slept with Jane consistently for the course of several weeks and never talked about it. They never mentioned it – that's just how it worked at the time and now it just doesn't work anymore. Instead of talking, she's moving on with someone else. It'll be good for her and while no, she doesn't love the dark haired man that crawled out of her bed at five in the morning to go home and get ready for work, she sees the potential.

She could love him in the future, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Maybe she was doomed to that poisonous love that'll haunt her until she's old and gray – taunting her that she's with the wrong man.

She's not though. Connor is the right man and Jane is the wrong. She isn't suffering from unrequited love; she'd seen through actions that what she feels for Jane isn't one sided. He loves her in his own way but it's not what she wants. It's hard to think of ways to explain what she's doing and she knows that she has to tell Jane why she's not stopping by his place late at night anymore but she dreads doing so.

It's going to hurt both of them which just furthers her belief that love with the wrong person is like a poison. It can kill you slowly if you let it but she's not going to. She's got a date tomorrow and he's a good man.

She needs to apologize to the one she's leaving behind for the chance at something that might not happen. In another world, perhaps she could be happy with Jane but not in this one. There's too much behind them, too much piled against them. Fighting for a shot would be pointless and she knows that he sees it that way too. Why else is he leaving her alone and not demanding to know why her nightly visits are over?

Either way, she's made her choice. She'd made it the second she let Connor pull her shirt over her head and toss it away. She loves one man but is choosing the other for the simple reason of not wanting to be poisoned. She hopes Jane understands; she doesn't want to lose him as her friend. She just doesn't want to be with him, after all, they were _technically _never anything more than friends who kept the loneliness away and that's something she can't keep doing.

A relationship like that with someone you love will poison both of you. She can't deal with it anymore and she's found someone else. Someone who treats her right and doesn't make her feel as though she's slowly dying inside. She hopes that will be enough.

**a/n: I know, I know. I generally write Jane/Lisbon things that end rather hopefully but for some reason, I just really liked the thought of Lisbon finding a good man. Besides whose to say that she doesn't eventually go back to him? ;) Use your imagination. That's all for this oneshot. I hoped you liked it. And because I have WAY too many stories, this has to stay a oneshot.**


End file.
